NSF-backed SECURE Center will support research security, international collaboration

Today, the U.S. National Science Foundation announced a five-year $67 million investment establishing the Safeguarding the Entire Community of the U.S. Research Ecosystem (SECURE) ($50 million to University of Washington and $17 million to Texas A&M University). Research security is a concern because some foreign entities attempt to unethically — or even unlawfully — access and use U.S. research. As mandated in the "CHIPS and Science Act of 2022," the NSF SECURE Center, led by the University of Washington with support from nine institutions of higher education, will serve as a clearinghouse for information to empower the research community to identify and mitigate foreign interference that poses risks to the U.S. research enterprise. The SECURE Center will share information and reports on research security risks, provide training on research security to the science and engineering community and serve as a bridge between the research community and government funding agencies to strengthen cooperation on addressing security concerns.

“NSF is committed to principled international collaboration. At the same time, we must address threats to the research enterprise,” said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. “The SECURE Center is how we bring the research community together to identify risks, share information and leverage national expertise on research security to develop solutions that protect essential research being done at institutions across the nation. This is a community-focused platform, and the research community will be the drivers of how SECURE Center tools and services are designed, used and improved upon.”

To ensure that this approach to research security is community designed, community used and community improved," the SECURE Center will also serve as the nexus for five regional centers managed by six institutes of higher education:

• SECURE Northeast - Northeastern University.
• SECURE Southeast - Emory University.
• SECURE Midwest - University of Missouri.
• SECURE Southwest - The University of Texas at San Antonio and Texas A&M University.
• SECURE West - University of Washington.

Mississippi State University, the University of Michigan and Stanford University’s Hoover Institution will provide expertise on sensitive research, threat types, geopolitical analysis and international collaboration. Participation by the College of Charleston and Mississippi State University, located in NSF Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research jurisdictions, ensures that emerging research and minority-serving institutions are included in SECURE Center activities.

The SECURE Center will link members of the U.S. research community from institutes of higher learning, nonprofits and businesses in a safe, trustworthy platform to share ideas, needs and information on research security. 

Additionally, SECURE Analytics, led by Texas A&M University with support from the Hoover Institution and Parallax, a nonprofit research institute, will provide enhanced expertise in the form of landscape analyses, risk modeling and data reporting through the SECURE Center. SECURE Analytics will support the analytics needs of the SECURE Center and the broader research community while working to protect the privacy of the center’s users. 

Possessing a suite of solutions like shared tools, best practices, training, analyses and other information, all delivered through a shared virtual environment, SECURE will assist the research community in making decisions regarding their research activities in the context of malign foreign threats.